Jazz icon Sam Rivers dead at 88

Sam Rivers: 1923-2011

Joy was the word that resurfaced again and again when musicians and friends remembered Sam Rivers, a saxophonist, flutist and composer whose long list of credits included work with the legendary Miles Davis.

Rivers, an internationally known jazz icon and fixture on the Orlando music scene for roughly two decades, died Monday night from pneumonia, his daughter confirmed Tuesday. He was 88.

Until September, Rivers had continued his weekly open rehearsals with his powerful big band, the Rivbea Orchestra, at the Orlando musician's union hall.

"Music was his life, music is what kept him alive," said his daughter Monique Rivers Williams of Apopka, who also handled her father's concert bookings and learned from him the joy of making music. "My father, in my eyes, was on vacation all his life. He used to tell me, 'I'm working, but I'm loving every minute of it.' Retirement was not in his vocabulary. 'Why do we even have that word,' he used to ask me, 'there should be no such thing.'"

Members of Orlando's tightknit musical community also recalled the joy of Rivers' work. When news of his death surfaced on social-networking sites Monday night, a small group gathered to listen to his music at Will's Pub. On Tuesday, the morning show on independent radio station 91.5 FM (WPRK) played his music and interviewed Anthony Cole, a multi-instrumentalist and longtime member of Rivers' ensembles.

Cole talked about how he at first was intimidated to play saxophone next to such a great musician: "Suddenly, I'm onstage with him with a horn around my neck," said Cole, adding that Rivers encouraged him to explore outside of traditional musical structures.

"That's what Sam's thing was," Cole said. "It's a good thing to know the grid, but that was Sam's thing: to make a joyful noise."

The son of a church musician, Rivers was born in Oklahoma in 1923 and raised in Chicago and Little Rock, Ark. He started piano lessons as a child and later played trombone before settling on the tenor saxophone. Taking inspiration from jazz heroes such as Coleman Hawkins, among others, he moved to Boston and performed with Herb Pomeroy's big band, an ensemble that also included future music producer Quincy Jones. In 1964, he moved to New York, where he was hired by Miles Davis.

As his reputation spread, Rivers played with a diverse array of musicians ranging from jazz icons Dizzy Gillespie and Cecil Taylor to blues musicians T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker.

His move to Orlando in the early 1990s was a result of an invitation by an array of jazz musicians that had arrived to work at Walt Disney World, his daughter recalled.

"He had chances to go anywhere he wanted, but the musicians here told him, 'Your band awaits you,'" Williams said. "When he walked into the room for the first rehearsal, they all stood up and clapped. He told me, 'How could you refuse an invitation like that?'"

Matt Gorney, now an instructor at Full Sail University in Winter Park, worked as Rivers' business manager for about a dozen years, starting shortly after the musician's arrival.

"I wanted to see him play and it just sort of grew out of that," Gorney said. "The next thing you know, I'm driving around the country, booking shows."

In Orlando, Rivers developed a devoted following that started with jazz purists and expanded to include dance-oriented club-goers and rockers.

"People were dancing and moving to really challenging music," Gorney said. "It would be like dancing to Stravinsky if you weren't a ballet dancer. It was accepted by a lot of people that weren't 'jazz fans.' It was kind of uniquely Orlando thing. Sam would play in another city and the jazz cognoscenti would show up, but in Orlando it was the weirdest mixture of crowds."

Rivers was an inspirational presence for young musicians, said Jeff Rupert, director of the Jazz Studies Program at the University of Central Florida and a member of the Rivbea Orchestra for 16 years.

"It's amazing that he could be so cutting edge and at the same time had a full knowledge, not just of jazz history, but music history," Rupert said. "He made everybody feel you were part of the whole history. He made all these young players feel very welcome, like they had a place in the arts."

The UCF Jazz Ensemble will perform a Rivers composition, "Vortex," at the upcoming Florida Music Educators Association Conference in Tampa in January. Rupert's only regret is that he won't be able to tell the songwriter about it.

"I mean, how can we represent Orlando without playing some Sam Rivers?" Rupert said.

Rivers also is survived by a son, Dr. Samuel Rivers III of Boston; and daughters Cindy Johnson of Mount Dora, and Traci Tozzi of Glen Rock, N.J.; five grandchildren; and many great-grandchildren.

Williams said that there will be a private service for family members and plans are being made for a public memorial concert to honor her father's life and work.